


Write Me a Happy Ending

by ellacj



Series: 52 Weeks of Swan Queen [40]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Curse, Backstory, F/F, First Meetings, Writers, poet!regina makes a comeback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 02:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4942807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love."</p><p>-Ray Bradbury</p>
            </blockquote>





	Write Me a Happy Ending

**Author's Note:**

> finally caught up!! and entering the last quarter of the challenge. very bittersweet.

Emma stares with narrowed eyes at the blank screen in front of her, wishing desperately that the words that have evaded her will magically write themselves. But, as always, the document remains wordless and white, as though taunting her with its lack of a breakthrough.

“Darling, have you written a single word in the hour you’ve been sitting there?” Cruella asks behind her on her way from the kitchen to the bedrooms.

“Nope,” Emma sighs. “Writing is hard.”

Cruella comes into the little office with two mugs of cocoa, setting one beside Emma and taking a hearty sip from the other. “I saw this in the mail yesterday,” she murmurs, sliding a flyer across the desk and onto Emma’s untouched keyboard. “Maybe you should try it out.”

Emma takes the flyer. “Writing classes?” She sighs. “Cruella, I’m a _published author_. I don’t need writing classes.”

“No, of course not. But maybe they could get some ideas flowing.” Cruella shrugs. “It beats sitting here staring at a blank page.” She gets up to go back to her bedroom, leaving Emma alone doing just that.

Finally, with a sigh of defeat, Emma opens her browser and types in the URL written at the top of the flyer.

 

Cruella comes with her to the class to save her embarrassment, but Emma’s irritation grows when all Cruella does is make eyes at the woman across the table whose name card reads “Ursula”.

The teacher, a too-perky woman named Kathryn, has them break into partnerships. Of course Cruella leaps at the chance to catch Ursula’s arm, throwing a half-apologetic shrug at Emma as she does. Emma, meanwhile, makes awkward eye contact with a woman across the room and walks over to sit beside her. “Hey,” she says. “I’m Emma.”

She smiles. “I thought I recognized you. My son loves your books.”

“Oh, does he?” Emma’s stomach churns. She was hoping not to be recognized today. “I’ve been a bit blocked lately, so my roommate thought it’d be good for me to be here.”

“I don’t see why not. I’m Regina, by the way.”

“Good to meet you, Regina. How old’s your son?”

“He’s eleven. My sister bought him the first book in the series for his tenth birthday, and he’s been hooked ever since.”

Emma grins. “Maybe I could meet him sometime. I love meeting the kids.”

“I’m sure he’d absolutely love that.”

Kathryn claps her hands. “Now that you guys have gotten to know each other a little bit, I want you to share with each other one reason why you’re here today.”

Emma smiles. “I don’t know. I guess I’m here because I haven’t been having the idea flow I want and I was hoping I could get a fresh perspective here.”

“That’s a fine reason.” Regina twists the ring on her finger around and around and around. “I’m here because I used to write poetry like I would breathe. But ever since Henry was born I just haven’t been able to find the motivation. I miss it.”

“I know what you mean. I mean, I don’t have kids, but I know how it feels to lose your drive. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“That it is.”

Kathryn claps her hands to draw attention back to her. “Okay, now I want you grab your pen and paper and write for ten minutes about the most beautiful place you’ve ever been. Don’t worry about quality; just let the words flow onto the page.”

“Easy for you to say,” Regina mutters.

Emma snickers to herself. She reaches into her oversized purse and pulls out a leather-bound notebook and her favorite pen, opening to a clean page and pressing the binding flat to the table. She smiles; she’s forgotten lately the feeling of looking on blank paper. It seems as though the page is absolutely vibrating with potential; all the stories she hasn’t written yet threatening to spill over the neat lines, bend them out of shape in their desperation to be heard.

The words come out almost faster than she can write them and she scribbles through hand cramps, spelling errors, crossed out sentences and ­not-quite-right words. She writes until Kathryn calls time, and sits back to admire her handiwork. Two and a half pages sit in front of her covered in the chicken scratch she forgot made her feel so warm inside.

“Now share your piece with your partner.”

 _Fuck_.

“You can go first,” Emma says to Regina.

Regina smiles sheepishly as she opens her small notebook to the correct page. “It’s a first draft, obviously, so it needs some work.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great.”

Regina flushes pink. She clears her throat and begins to read. “I’ve backpacked through the Alps and bicycled down the Great Wall. I honeymooned in Barcelona and spent my widowhood watching the Aurora Borealis in the northernmost part of Canada. I’ve seen the world’s greatest wonders, and yet the most beautiful place I’ve ever been is contained within the walls of my own home.

“The most beautiful place is my son’s bedroom. His books line the walls in alphabetical order, and within them penciled snapshots of his escape from this world. He never picks his clothes up from the floor and almost always has a snack sitting abandoned on his desk. His bed is never made and more often than not he falls asleep with the lights on and a book in his hands.

“There’s a snowglobe on his nightstand. Inside, a man and a woman clutch the hands of a young boy as they skate across a frozen lake. When he was young he thought it was the three of us – him, his father, and me. Now that he’s older, he looks at it and sees nothing more than a faceless family. But when I walk past that snowglobe I always stop to shake it.

“And I sit down to watch the snow fall down over the shoulders of my Daniel.” Regina glances up with a pink tinge to her cheeks as she sets down the notebook. “Like I said, it’s a first draft, but-”

“That was amazing,” Emma cuts her off. “I absolutely loved it.”

Regina grins. “Thanks. You should read yours.”

Emma swallows once and looks down to her page. “The most beautiful place I’ve ever been is the passenger seat of my boyfriend’s yellow Volkswagen Bug zipping down the freeway at likely dangerous speeds. I call him my boyfriend, but he was more than that. He was the only person I’ve only loved.

“We stayed wherever there was someone willing to take us for a few nights, but mostly we lived on the road. I remember I used to stick my feet out the window going eighty miles an hour and laugh wildly as the wind kissed the spaces between my toes. I remember I would crank up the car stereo and blast Guns ‘N’ Roses as loud as it would go. I remember I felt ultimately free.” Emma pauses to squint at the page and try to decipher her handwriting.

“Neal had this map of the United States he carried with him everywhere, and he would draw an ‘x’ in red sharpie over every city we spent the night in. After half a year of driving, his map was dotted with red x’s from coast to coast.

“But I was still unsatisfied. I’d spent my entire life searching for stability, for safety, for home. And while Neal was undoubtedly, one hundred percent my home, I wanted somewhere to come back to after a long day. So one day Neal pulled out his map of America and told me to close my eyes and point to somewhere on the map. ‘Whatever city you choose,’ he told me, ‘that’s where we’ll go. That’s where we’ll find home.’

“My finger landed on Tallahassee, Florida. On the drive there, ‘Tallahassee’ became a synonym for ‘happiness’. Any other person would probably have written about Tallahassee for this prompt, and maybe I would, too, if we’d ever made it there.

“We got held up in Phoenix. A misunderstanding and a bitter betrayal led to me sitting in the fourth bunk in Cell Block B at the Afton Correctional Facility and Neal slipping away as he always did. I never stopped loving him, though.

“When I got out I found that Neal had left me his old yellow Bug with his entire life’s savings tucked into the glove compartment. Ten thousand dollars. I got in and drove straight on to Tallahassee, and when I got there he wasn’t waiting for me. I haven’t seen him again, but that front passenger seat remains the most beautiful place in my memory.” Emma closes her notebook and glances up with a small smile.

Kathryn claps her hands to draw attention and scans the group with a grin. “We’re out of time for today, but I hope to see you all back here tomorrow ready to write. Have a great evening!” she scoops up her bag and is the first one out the door, while Emma takes her time packing her things.

“It was good to meet you,” Regina says.

Emma grins. “You, too. I’d love to see some more of your work, if you’d let me. I really did love the poem.”

“Yes, I’d definitely be all right with that. Here, let me give you my number.” Regina tears a scrap of paper from the corner of her page and scribbles her phone number on it, handing it to Emma.

“Maybe someday I’ll stop by and meet your son. He sounds like a sweet kid.”

“That’d absolutely make his day.”

Cruella chooses that exact moment to sidle up beside Emma and loop her arm through her roommate’s. “Ready to go, darling?”

“If you are. I’m surprised that woman isn’t still clinging to your side,” Emma teases.

“Her name is Ursula.”

Emma raises her eyebrows. “Wow, you actually cared enough to learn her name. This I’ve gotta hear.” She turns to Regina. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Regina smiles. “See you.”

Emma and Cruella turn to walk out the door, Cruella babbling on about Ursula, but Emma’s barely paying attention. She can barely wait to get home to her computer. Characters and plots run through her head, and she has to admit, this writing class was anything but the mistake she thought it would be. And meeting Regina?

Icing on the cake.


End file.
